Posts Tagged ‘crisis’

Elections 2015: How could the electoral struggle of the parliamentary left strangle any healthy community organizing and horizontal self-organizing due to their lack of any other potential proposal.

When the traditional welfare state in Europe became obvious that it was not going to survive the onslaught of neo-liberal budgetary/fiscal crisis (an artificial economic crisis according to some or an inevitable fiscal crisis according to others) the consequences on the population were not too far from materializing. The social control and management mechanisms of the state had to fabricate a tool to manage a crisis, in this case we are dealing with is health. Instead of addressing the health needs of the population with some form of health-care within the economic realities caused by the economic crisis it chose to continue privatizing health care and leaving the rest for charity. Unlike the US society, where the welfare state itself was minimal and primitively crude, charity networks have for long take a load of the state’s responsibilities, in Europe there is a very high expectation that all such needs are rights protected by the state for all its citizens. Even when natural disasters hit Southern European states, the public is trained to expect and demand the impossible from the state. In the case of health care needs the state has finally devised a social control mechanism to relieve any resulting political pressure due to this neo-liberal transition.

This mechanism, or shall we say weapon from the armory, is in the form of a left wing party able to orchestrate a “movement” of charity and volunteerism in the form of a new-world alternativism participatory masquerade. What they could not be creative enough to devise on their own that had to borrow from the anarchist/anti-authoritarian/libertarian movement, redefine its anti-state rhetoric to some meaningless (to them) propaganda terminology, incorporate and assimilate what they could, torpedo anything they could not, and vois la: An alternative health care system, run and controlled by the state, with volunteers as employees, and a product of left-wing social democratic ingenuity. Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday May 30, 2013, at around 21:30 pm, five people in a private car in the center of Athens abducted Bulut Yayla a Kurdish (Turkish citizen) political refugee. At that time the 24 year old Yayla was leaving a small Kurdish restaurant, when five people pounced on him, beat him and threw him in their car, covering his eyes and mouth. Four of the five kidnappers got into the car and vanished, while the fifth walked to where a Greek police patrol car was parked, for a few minutes after the incident.

The Kurdish political refugee kidnapping took place in front of some people who came to listen to the victim for help. Some of them recorded the license plate of the car (ZKI 8462). Relatives, lawyers and fellow investigating the issue contend that the unmarked car belongs to the Greek Police. Police officials denied all allegations and involvement and ordered an official inquiry on the issue; after the delivery of the victim was complete.

The next day the Greek Police moved the kidnapped victim close to the Turkish border, where they handed him to the Turkish (counter) terrorism agency. Throughout the mission he was wearing a hood and continued till the time he entered the Turkish agency van, according to the complaint filed later by the kidnapped. The vehicle crossed the border through an opening in the fence, bypassing customs control. Past the border he was forced into another vehicle and another group of cops took charge of his transfer to Istanbul, some of whom spoke English, Turkish, and more … Read the rest of this entry »